Why has Google Answers shut down?!?

This morning I noticed the website says... "Google Answers is no longer accepting questions.





We're sorry, but Google Answers has been retired, and is no longer accepting new questions. Search or browse the existing Google Answers index by using the search box above or the category links below. "





Did the free Yahoo!Answers just kill their paid product??

Why has Google Answers shut down?!?
Why would such a seemingly useful service close up shop? There could be several reasons for Google to pull the plug on Google Answers, the simplest of which is that they want to move engineers to bigger and better projects. However, in the four years that Google Answers was open for business, it fell under some criticism that may have affected its popularity. Some said that Google was making money off of otherwise free services provided by librarians, and others were concerned about Google Answers enabling plagiarism by students. More controversially, however, some of the researchers involved were unsatisfied with the unruliness of Google's process.





One concern was that users were able to rate the answers they received on a scale of 1 to 5, and researchers with low ratings could possibly be up for "review." Additionally, if users were unsatisfied with the answers they received, they could ask for clarification (for no extra charge) or ask for a refund altogether. While this is all fine and good for the customer, the researchers saw it another way. Complex questions required time to research, and if a user did not fully understand the nature of the answer, they could request a refund and the researcher would not get paid for his or her time.





One ex-Google Answers researcher, Jessamyn West, feels as if the money aspect of Google Answers changed the dynamics of an otherwise useful service, she told Ars. Many of the researchers who participate in similar services, such as Ask MetaFilter, do the work for free because they enjoy being helpful. However, "once you start paying people, you need to treat them some certain ways from a legal and ethical perspective, and the Google Answers model wasn't ready for that," she said, adding that "you'd have people grabbing high-dollar questions who might not have been the best person to answer them." She also pointed out that that some Google "researchers" were not doing research at all, but simply searching—you guessed it—Google for the answers. "At the end of the day, saying you're doing research when you're searching Google (which was the way Google Answers skewed) is silly. I don't think the Google people may have thought much about how the money factor would change the dynamics," she told us.





West recounted an incident where she was put through hours of research and clarification for one unsatisfied customer, only to get dragged into a semantics battle between West and the customer along with the customer's mailing list buddies. This was all over $3 that she did finally receive, along with a one-star rating. "Is the customer always right when the customer misunderstands vocabulary words?" she wrote. (West ended up leaving Google, not because of her ratings but because she broke Google's terms of service by writing about her experience without prior approval.)





Policies such as this discouraged some Google Answers researchers from putting in work to answer tough questions, "since the questioner is the final arbiter of whether their question was sufficiently answered," said West. When the researchers are hesitant to answer questions, users are much less likely to submit questions in the first place, thus damaging Google Answers's popularity. And so, the days of Google's researchers answering oddball questions are coming to an end. Google Answers is soon to become one of the first Google services to disappear due to human—rather than technical—limitations.
Reply:There can't be two right Answers to a question.
Reply:yahoo rules! google drules!
Reply:because yahoo finally kicked google's a$s in something
Reply:The answer to the question is competition:





Yahoo offers Y!Answers


MSN offers: QnABeta





there both free. How can Google Compete with that? I guess they will release it free sometime in the future. Each QnA service are a little diffrent but to be honest I would not pay to post a question when I can do it somewhere else for free.
Reply:Here's the link to a blog that can answer your question.
Reply:Yes.
Reply:Google sucks it.